Friday, November 20, 2009

All fiction should be condemned. If not banned outright, we should at least universally condemn all fictionists - people who create and distribute works of fiction.

The reason we should adopt this attitude is because all works of fiction are basically lies. To tolerate fictionism is to tolerate lying. Those who tolerate lying, in turn, are enablers for all of those who engage in fraud and other forms of deception. If we condemn all lying - even fiction - then there is no way that the fraudster, the deceptive advertiser, the political manipulator, or the public relations specialist can get the idea that the lies they engage in are somehow permissible.

This argument is meant as a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that religious moderates must be condemned as enablers of the actions of the violent religious extremists. Blaming the former for the actions of the latter is as absurd as blaming "fictionists" for the actions of liars and other forms of malicious manipulators of the truth.

It has been my position in this blog that all moral condemnation must be tightly focused - that only those who are actually guilty are to be condemned. There is a human tendency to divide the world into tribes of "us" and "them", and to take the wrongs committed by a subgroup of "them" (or even imagined wrongs) and apply it to all of "them". This is used to "justify" intertribal conflict - such as conflict between the atheist tribe and the theist tribe.

The way to avoid this outcome is to constantly focus attention on keeping condemnation tightly focused only on those who are guilty, to be on guard for the tendency to make irrational leaps from the subset to the whole, and to attack them when and where we find them.

Which is one of the things I try to do in this blog.

The claim that moderates are to be condemned for the actions of the extremists is one of those irrational absurdities embraced, not because they make sense, but because they mask tribal hatreds in a cloak of apparent legitimacy.

If it is permissible to condemn the moderate for the behavior of the extremists, then it should be just as permissible to credit the extremists for the behavior of the moderate. Consider two extreme cases - one of a deeply religious doctor who thinks that God wants him to provide medical care to the impoverished children in third world countries, and the other a violent jihadist who seeks to blow up a crowded shopping mall.

What argument can we give for saying that the doctor deserves to be condemned for the actions of the terrorist that is not also an argument for giving the terrorist moral credit for the actions of the doctor.

The argument is the same. Just as the doctor who promotes devotion to God is an enabler of the terrorist, the terrorist who promotes devotion to God is an enabler to the doctor. To claim that the argument is valid when used as a reason to condemn the doctor for the actions of the terrorist, but invalid when offered as a reason to praise the terrorist for the actions of the doctor, is itself irrational.

If irrationality is the true enemy, then this is an example of the true enemy. Only, this time, we are talking about the irrationality of atheists.

Rationality says that these inferences are invalid. If rationality is a virtue (and I hold that it is a virtue, though it is one we have only a limited ability to practice), then no good (rational) person would embrace this argument. In fact, the good (rational) person would condemn those who use this argument - particularly when it is used to give an illusion of legitimacy to what is used to condemn (to promote and, in some cases, sell) hatred of all members of a target tribe.

Which is what I am seeking to do here.

Please note, this is not an argument for being nice to religious moderates because it is politically expedient to do so. This is not an argument for promoting niceness at the expense of reason. This is an argument that embraces the position that rationality is a virtue and irrationality is a vice, and condemns a popular form of reasoning because it is irrational.

The claim that we must blame the moderates for the actions of the extremists is irrational - it is an invalid inference and for that reason no friend of rationality would embrace it. For that reason, any friend of rationality would condemn those who practice it.

From here we actually start down a long train of irrational arguments.

Why not credit the terrorist for the good done by the doctor? Answer: Because people can do good without God.

However, people can also do evil without God, so that argument doesn't work.

Ahhh, Alonzo, but what you are missing out on is that religion is required to do evil in the name of God.

Yes, but religion is also required to do good in the name of God, so that argument still does not work. We still do not have anything that a friend of rationality would embrace - that an enemy of irrationality would not condemn.

12 comments:

In order to reinforce the argument and make it less likely that I'll forget it in future comment threads, I'd like to restate it.

Condemning moderate religionists for enabling extreme, morally evil religionists, is like condemning the writer of a novel for a politician involved in lies and fraud. Would that make it a form of slippery slope argument?

I know that moderates and extremists certainly fall in different camps, but with the new Psalm 109:8 bumper sticker campaign against Obama, could we not ask the moderate Christians to stick up for their Christ and denounce this act of moral evil and anti-American behavior?

Well, this post has prompted me to think about how I feel about the "moderates are partly responsible for extremists" position. I'd previously felt there was a grain of truth to it, but perhaps I'll reconsider.

However, I'm afraid I find your first argument to be awful (the one about the doctor and the terrorist is better). Fiction novelists aren't engaged in moderate lying; they're telling stories that everyone is expected to know didn't actually occur, don't typically present their stories as being true, and that they didn't occur would be freely admitted. So, I'm afraid "false analogy" would be an easy dismissal of the original argument.

A better analogy would be people who tell their children that Santa Claus or the tooth fairy are real, or who tell white lies to spare someone's feelings. I suppose the tooth fairy story could be considered fiction, but what makes it lying is that they're actually leading their children to believe the story is true. I suppose that would also include fictional stories prefaced with a false claim that it was "based on true events," but even in that case, it is not the composition of the fiction that is "moderate lying," but the insistence that the fiction is not fiction.

Of course, I've heard people argue that lying to your kids about Santa is a terrible thing to do, so I guess it won't convince any of them.

As Alessa said, the point is not to "blame" moderates for the actions of the extremists. The problem here -- which would not apply to the fiction metaphor -- is that moderates insist that faith -- all faith -- is something that must be respected above everything else. They may on one hand condemn the actions of the extremists, but on the other hand they actually admire them for their absolute devotion.

As a matter of fact, it was a group of secular liberals, under the guise of moral subjectivism (that there is no God and thus no objective morality) who came up with the idea that it is irrational to claim that there is anything objectively wrong with any faith system.

According to that view, everything is just a matter of opinion. The only form of criticism that can be launched against another belief system can come from within the critic's belief system. There were no right answers just 'points of view'.

Religious moderates tended to argue that this system gave a type of legitimacy to slavery and the Holocaust (you could not say they were really wrong).

So, now, a new group of secular liberals are blaming religious moderates for something that a great many religious moderates rejected, and which actually came from a different branch of secular liberals.

But, we can't be condemning other secular liberals, so we are going to blame the religious moderates instead.

The religious moderates I was talking about -- and they're mentioned by Harris, Dawkins and others, so they don't exist just in my limited experience -- are not moral relativists in general. They simply subscribe to a version of Dan Dennett's "belief in belief": that all faith (as long as it's in "God", or in "something greater than yourself") is a good thing, automatically worthy of respect, and beyond criticism.

Fiction novelists aren't engaged in moderate lying; they're telling stories that everyone is expected to know didn't actually occur, don't typically present their stories as being true, and that they didn't occur would be freely admitted.

Actually, there are some religious people who would apply everything you just said to their religion. I'm friends with a christian who fits that description perfectly, and yet is still active in her church. Robert Price also comes to mind.

...moderates insist that faith -- all faith -- is something that must be respected above everything else. They may on one hand condemn the actions of the extremists, but on the other hand they actually admire them for their absolute devotion.

Really? All moderates feel this way? Sounds like a HUGE generalization, and a completely unjustified one. Honestly it sounds like you simply made that up. Way to stand up for rational virtues. :/

Why is it that religious moderates almost never denounce -- or, when they do, do it mildly -- the extremists of their own religion.

Seriously? You haven't been hearing "Islam is a religion of peace" from Muslim moderates for years? You haven't heard their public condemnation of violence whenever they get a chance to speak? You haven't heard all the outcry from Muslim moderates that no good Muslim would have committed the Fort Hood massacre?

On the christian side, Barry Lynn is the head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is very vocal in condemning extremists, is often on news shows, and is often in court fighting against christian extremists.

I may be out of touch, but I don't think Robert Price is very representative of even moderate Christians. I'm pretty sure that I used to qualify as a moderate Christian, but I still believed that Jesus existed, and there was a god who was to some degree reflected in the writings of the bible. I certainly didn't think the bible was just another literary work.

Price, on the other hand, has a book out about how he thinks even Paul was made up.

There may be Christians and other religious folks who take their holy books about as seriously as I take Dune, but I don't think they're the majority of even moderates of any particular denomination. Unless I've been using the term wrong.

Religious objectivists have been condemning them for years for promoting a philosophy that said that nothing, not even slavery or the Holocaust, was ever really wrong.

Is it, perhaps, because there is a double standard in play?

Anybody who holds that something is "beyond criticism" has gotten some serious explaining to do.

However, my question is, why target "religious moderates"? Not all religious moderates are guilty of these charges. Not all people guilty of these charges are religious moderates. Some were secular liberals. The secular liberal faction was, almost certainly, orders of magnitude larger than the "believe in belief" faction.

The religious moderates I was talking about . . . subscribe to a version of Dan Dennett's "belief in belief": that all faith (as long as it's in "God", or in "something greater than yourself") is a good thing, automatically worthy of respect, and beyond criticism.

Okay, some who share this belief qualify as "religious moderates". However, what justifies making the target of condemnation "religious moderates?" Perhaps the target of criticism should be "those who believe in belief" as you call it.

Extending the target group to "religious moderates" is exactly the type of unjustified (bigoted) use of the hasty generalization fallacy that I have been complaining about. And if irrationality is a vice, then the vice of using the hasty generalization fallacy to condemn innocent moderates of wrongdoing would properly qualify as vicious (meaning: exemplifying a vice).

Why is it that religious moderates almost never denounce -- or, when they do, do it mildly -- the extremists of their own religion... and sometimes even those of other religions?

Why is it that secular liberals almost never denounced - and still are not denouncing - the moral subjectivists?

Why did so many Christians, including the Pope, condemn the Muhammad cartoons (instead of the Muslim threats, and actual acts, of violence), for instance?

I consider this like asking, "Why do so many black people commit crimes" (as if to say all black people should be condemned as criminals because "so many of them commit crimes"). I focus my criticism on "those who criticized the cartoonists and not those who threatened violence". If this applies to a substantial percentage of Christians, so be it. If it does not, so be it. That doesn't matter. My target remains, "those who criticized the cartoonists but not those who threatened violence' regardless of what those other, irrelevant statistics are.

As an atheist who doesn't believe that everyone needs to be an atheist, or that the world will be a better place if everyone is an atheist -- my main objection to the "blame the moderates" strategy of new atheists is that they seem to prefer an ideological war with religious fundamentalists, rather than wait for the compromises that the liberals eventually make to adjust to changing social norms.

Much of the reason likely has to do with the fact that it is easier to debate a fundamentalist than someone who keeps insisting that scriptures have to be understood as metaphor or allegories.

But when it comes to the blame game, should new atheists like Sam Harris be blamed for enabling religious extremists when he declares that he has more respect for fundamentalists than the wishy washy moderates who keep trying to keep their religious dogmas relevant when faced with the challenges of new scientific knowledge? Some atheist fundamentalists seem to prefer a world of extremists rather than have compromisers reinterpreting their religious dogmas to try to suit the times.

About Me

When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to leave the world better off than it would have been if I had not existed. This started a quest, through 12 years of college and on to today, to try to discover what a "better" world consists of. I have written a book describing that journey that you can find on my website. In this blog, I will keep track of the issues I have confronted since then.